Having an investment portfolio is generally considered good but one must always invest in the right channels and not through someone that is randomly met online.
While many of us are wary of scammers from the internet, there are always a few that thinks with their “2nd brain” (Both men and women). Here are 2 stories.
Losing $70,000 to a scammer
I know a girl on FB, start chatting with her, about 2 WEEKS later she TOLD me she EARNED $500+ during our chat and she approached me to join her in the investment.
She helped me twice with the investment and made me $182 by putting in a total of $1200 within 2 hours time respectively.
She convinced me to invest $20,000 in order to get high returns within a shorter time period, and on that day there were rewards of $4,888 if invest $30,000 and she said she could share $5000 to make up the 30000 and she expect to share $1888 from the reward.
But finally, she told me it was too late unable to invest. The next day, she said only $60,000 then can do the investment and we do the last investment, will take back all our money.
So I put in $20,000 more and she does the investment during the night. About an hour later she told me can do the withdrawal. When I do the withdrawal at the website, the customer told me my account is frozen and needed to top up 50% of my withdrawal amount of $69,772.
This is when I realised it was a scam.
The handsome guy – $200,000 gone
I lost $200k to an internet love scam
This is a cryptocurrency investment scam. In nov 2021, i was matched with a handsome guy on coffee meet bagels named justin lee. His profile says he is an r&d manager in a clean energy company. With a ntu master’s degree. The relationship goal is marriage.
Similar to other scam stories you read here. This person quickly asked for your WhatsApp information, saying he is busy and not always checking cmb. Say good morning, good night, and chat with you every day, showing they care about your wellbeing and gradually gaining your trust.
Expressed strong feelings for you and said that he wanted to build a family with me. Started to talk about crypto investment on day2 and tried to get me invest in a crypto short futures trading platform called xm (https://www.xmpra.com/#/). You need to contact customer service via whatsapp to deposit and withdraw money (to or from another user’s bank account, which is weird). Initially the amount was small like 1k for a 60s futures investment (following his instruction at his calculated time) and you did see profits. However, he asked me to invest more in order to profit more. My bank rejected the transaction and filed a police report. I listened and pulled my money out from the platform.
But somehow i still trusted the guy because he said he already planned a really nice meeting for us and continued to chat with him, because he stopped asking me to invest in this platform after my objection. However, he later introduced me to mining in coinbase wallet. Since it is legitimate, i started to do that and did see profits. He soon asked me if i could borrow him some money to do a big investment and will give my money back on the next day. I did but he found different reasons to ask me for more and showed that he was investing on the xm platform for me and even shared the account password with me to assure me. The money doubled and he said he will withdraw. However, he said that a 28k usd tax needs to be paid in order to withdraw the money and shared his chat with the customer service, after i asked.
I just wanted to get my money back so i sent the tax money they asked for. Then he blocked me and the customer service also blocked me on Whatsapp.